


Torches

by forlornwind



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Madara's childhood as a sensor, Warring States Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:57:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9045203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forlornwind/pseuds/forlornwind
Summary: The childhood story of Uchiha Madara and how he perceives the world as a sensor; His attraction to Senju Hashirama at first meet, and the one time he put Tobirama beside Izuna.





	

Dead of night, silence took reign, and the air carries a little chill from the north winds.

A great time to sleep for most children.

But not for Uchiha Madara.

Though there was no battle raging, the wars ended for the day, and his eyes are closed, Madara does not look for sleep.

He is listening to soft familiar songs. Soft because _they_ were asleep and he felt like listening in on their dreams ( ~~or wake them right before a nightmare~~ ).

Madara could remember the day he started hearing these harmonies. It was the day he was taught about chakra at a young age of three. When he first began to mold the chakra, right then he heard the first song.

The song of his father was a victorious horn across soaring fields and it made him eye-wide with intense awe. Madara replays that song every day since, especially before he enters a fight. He wants that horn rooting for him, and he wants to win the **honour** of going back home to hear it. To have the _right_ to hear it, he has to be the best because his father’s song was the best one.

Now that song was a soft whistling flute as his parents sleep in the room opposite to his. There were highs and lows, his father must be dreaming. But there were no drums… It was a nightmare when there were drums. Madara learned and remembered every distinct sound that would play right before a nightmare starts and he would wake its victim.

Sometimes, Madara got hit for disrupting. But he decides that the physical pain was a hundred times more tolerable than the singeing of nerves that he has to endure, keeping him up at nights in burning loath, when he has to hear someone in a nightmare.

As his brothers sleep soundly by his side, Madara imagines twisting the harmonies into little balls of flame sitting upon sturdy torches. Each ember is a different colour and there is a name attached to it. Also a journal under the torch that continued to record its playing times, with only a gap here and there when Madara had to tune them out while engaged in activities that required his full attention. Meditating with his father, rituals and ceremonies, training on his own, etc.

He counts the seven flames, naming them, including his. Madara always made his flame that much brighter and puts his torch at the front of the other six _–his brothers’ behind his parents’_ , because Madara wanted to be a hero in their story, to protect them with all his might, to burn the brightest and burn all the Uchiha’s enemies. At the thought of the Senju clan, his flame only grows bigger.

It’s good, he decides, this hatred makes him powerful and it is good to keep it.

Finally, he recites a soft prayer,

 

> _May the Gods of the Uchiha widen ever our fans and boast ever our flames unceasing._

Then a more casual one,

 

> _And please, please, I beg you, let me be stronger and watch over my brothers. Thank you Indra._

.

.

.

One by one, the flames go out.

Madara doesn’t know where he had gone wrong, or if he had angered the Gods on the nights he was too sick and forgot his prayer.

Why?

Because when he closes his eyes…

**He is left with four torches and three burnt journals.**

No amount of crying and searching would bring them back. Actually, Madara tries not to cry too much because there is a gnawing fear in his heart… that his tears might snuff out the remaining flames, too. So Madara tries not to cry.

So why does he keep coming back to this river? Wasn’t this worst?

Perhaps he hopes that the river would take away the tears he could not let fall. It’s a little illusion he needs.

As he stares into the oddly calming waters, Madara begins to doubt his role in his story. Maybe he was not a hero. Maybe he was the one who needs to be saved, too. Did he pray for the wrong thing? Should he start praying for someone else to come and save his family _–save him-_ from this war torn era?

It’s a little sigh he lets out.

The waters don’t answer him at all, but the swishing sound of the waves and being away from the melodies of the clan was a peace he welcomed.

So he visits the river regularly now. The thought of another hero pushed back into his mind. Madara doesn’t think there was one, if there was any at all. But the thought is still there, a quiet charm he wishes would get out of his mind. He skips the stones, hoping the force of it would push his naïve thoughts out… But Madara never reaches the other side.

That was when he heard it.

No, not the sound of a pebble hitting the other bank.

Oh, it was much more boisterous than that.

He heard the **roaring** falls of summer’s advent, a _vigorous life force_ that at first has his chakra raging a **fire storm** against earth, as if the flora and fauna were attacking him.

A mistake that was, because the woods recede when they come near embers. _They dance around him_ , and the shadows they cast **captivate** him. There was a gentleness in Hashirama’s melody that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. The thought of razing the forests is not one that crosses Madara’s will, _yet_.

He doesn’t know when he started seeing five torches instead of four when he closes his eyes.

Madara thinks it’s just the novelty of hearing a new song. That it would go away soon when wars tear them away from each other again.

But a hope of peace stays the fifth torch.

That flame is a brown colour, its journal new and its pages crisp.

Before long… Madara moves the fifth torch beside his, in front of his parents’, in front of Izuna’s. And he starts including Hashirama’s name in his prayers.

Then there is a sixth one. A smaller one. _Didn’t Hashirama mention of a younger brother, too?_ Yes. Madara will protect that boy, too.

And he puts the sixth torch beside Izuna.

Hashirama is his hero, Madara’s sure of it. It has to be, and that makes him giggle into his pillow.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :D If you wish, you can read [my other headcanons](http://forlornwind.tumblr.com/hc) that covers various topics from Madara's subordination to Uchiha Obito in the Fourth War and why Madara doesn't hate Tobirama etc. Please don't reblog my headcanons, though, I don't want anon hate..
> 
> [Reblog on Tumblr](http://forlornwind.tumblr.com/post/152243528555/enter-the-childhood-story-of-uchiha-madara-and) | [All FanFiction](http://forlornwind.tumblr.com/listing)


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